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Jason nudged the apartment door open with his shoulder, arms full of grocery bags threatening to split at the seams, only to stop dead on the threshold.
Flatpack boards lay on the floor like fallen dominoes. The coffee table had disappeared under a scatter of screws and dowels and an open canvas tool bag Jason had last seen gathering dust under the kitchen sink. And in the center of it all, crouched on the rug and squinting at a crumpled instruction manual, was Prime.
“What have you done to my living room?” Jason asked him.
“Our living room,” Prime said, not even bothering to look up.
Jason toed the door shut behind him and made his way toward the kitchen, carefully sidestepping a wayward metal bracket and a flattened cardboard box. “It’s my living room until you stop freeloading and pay for your half of the rent.”
“Hey, I do stuff. Loads of stuff.”
“Like what?”
“I went to Vietnam last week—got you that tea blend you like so much.”
“Which I appreciate,” Jason said, because he did. He set the groceries down on the kitchen counter and leaned against it, folding his arms. “But you paid for that with my money. Doesn’t count.”
That, apparently, was enough to make Prime glance up, brows pinched in a bemused expression. “Why not? You think I’d fly all the way out there for just anyone?”
Jason scoffed. “If it got you a photo op? Yeah, you would.”
“Well, I don’t,” Prime shot back, without missing a beat. “I’m practically your personal Uber. If anything, you should be paying me—”
Jason made a loud, tutting noise. “Excuses, excuses.”
Prime glared at him, pouting—actually pouting—before turning back to the mess strewn across the floor. Jason fought the smile that pulled at his lips, the warmth that bloomed in his chest, and pushed himself off the counter to unpack the groceries.
It wasn’t a big deal, really. Jason could cover the entire lease twice over if he had to. Talia made sure of that. Though they had never spoken about it—though they hadn’t properly talked in years, not since he’d first returned to Gotham—she always made sure there was more than enough zeroes in his bank account. A safety net with no strings he could see, but enough implication behind it that he tried not to look too closely.
The rent thing was less of an actual, serious argument and more of a . . . routine of sorts. Something Jason liked to bring up to fill the silence, for no other reason than to see how quickly Prime would rise to the bait. Prime always did, with that same earnest stubbornness that made Jason suspect Prime enjoyed the back-and-forth as much as he did.
Jason shoved a carton of milk into the fridge and looked back over his shoulder. “So what is that supposed to be?”
“A bookcase,” Prime said distractedly. He was frowning down at the manual with the kind of grim, intense focus he usually reserved for defusing bombs and holding up collapsing buildings.
“You planning on mounting it to the ceiling or something?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your room barely fits you as it is. So unless you’re gonna sleep standing up, there’s no way that’s fitting in there.”
It wasn’t even an exaggeration. Prime’s room was barely bigger than a walk-in closet. Jason had used it as one before Prime had moved in. There was just enough space for a mattress, a bedside cabinet, and a narrow strip to walk along the side. But it had been the only spare space in the apartment, and at the time, the alternative had been Prime burning himself out trying to keep up with rent he couldn’t afford, now that classes had cut into his hours.
“Ah—no, actually,” Prime said, looking up. A flush spread over his cheeks so quickly it was almost startling. “This isn’t for me.”
Jason frowned. “Then what—”
“It’s for you,” Prime blurted out. He rubbed the back of his neck, redder than Jason had ever seen him. “For your room, I mean. You said the other day you didn’t have enough space for your books, so I thought—I was gonna get a bedframe anyway, you’ve been nagging me about that for weeks so—but then I saw this and I thought—it was right there, so I figured . . .”
He trailed off, wincing, gesturing vaguely at the chaos around him.
“Oh,” Jason said, unsure what to say. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to. Consider it a birthday present. Or a Christmas present. Or—”
Prime stopped abruptly, his expression tightening—Jason could practically see the thought what am I saying flickering behind his eyes—as he looked back down at the manual.
“Thanks,” Jason said. “That’s . . . nice of you.”
But the response felt inadequate the second it left his mouth.
He had mentioned it, in passing—the growing stack of books by his bed, how he kept knocking them over every morning when he reached for his phone. But it hadn’t been a request or anything. It barely qualified as a problem. He just . . . wasn’t used to accumulating so much clutter.
For as long as he could remember, he had been a staunch minimalist. As a kid, it had been a necessity—he’d learned to keep only what he could carry, what he could hide, whatever he could pick up and take with him at a moment’s notice. Sentimentality wasn’t going to put food in his belly, so there was no use in getting attached to shit he didn’t need.
Even when he had lived at Wayne Manor, the instinct had stuck. What little he had kept back then—the books he’d annotated, his journals, the A+ tests and papers that had covered the fridge . . .
Well.
Whatever had been his back then wasn’t his now. He didn’t know if Bruce had kept them, boxed them up like relics, or if they had been quietly cleared out to make space for something—someone—new.
Jason had never asked. He didn’t know if he ever would. It was easier, sometimes, to pretend it was all still there. Packed away in boxes, untouched. Waiting.
The years since—the years of training, of traveling from country to country on Talia’s dime, of living in safehouses—had only sharpened the habit. He moved through cities like water through cupped hands, leaving nothing behind. This apartment had been no different: nothing on the walls, furniture that had come with the place, the whole of it carrying the same pristine stillness of a model unit.
But that was before Prime had moved in, with his comic book long boxes and his ever growing assortment of merchandise. Worst of all was the inexplicable collection of cheesy souvenirs he’d started acquiring during his stint as Superman. The apartment was filled with them now. Trinkets from cities Jason hadn’t visited. Postcards tacked to the walls. A ceramic cat from somewhere in Osaka, sitting on the windowsill. At least half a dozen novelty mugs Prime claimed he’d bought as a joke. A very large, very rotund Red Hood plushie.
The sort of junk Jason would have long thrown out. Would have never even bought to begin with. But all that stuff was Prime’s, which meant it would be a dick move if Jason got rid of them, when it had been his idea for Prime to move in in the first place.
“Don’t mention it,” Prime choked out. “So—uh—what’s for dinner?”
It wasn’t often Prime seemed truly uncomfortable about something. Jason was a little tempted to press, but something fluttered under his breastbone at the thought, so instead he said, “Shepherd’s pie. And creme brulee for dessert.”
Prime perked up immediately. “Ooh, fancy. What’s the occasion?”
“Finished my last midterm,” Jason said, turning back to the counter so he could start dicing the onions.
Prime heaved a dramatically mournful sigh. “Lucky. I still have to read Slaughterhouse Five for Professor Lorne’s class.”
Jason shot him a withering look. “I told you to do that ages ago.”
Prime rolled his eyes. “No one likes an I-told-you-so.”
“I wouldn’t have to say it so much if you listened the first time.”
“Maybe I would if she wasn’t out to get me.”
Jason snorted.
“She is!” Prime said, a little too vehemently. At the face Jason made, he hurried to add, “She keeps calling on me in class—”
“During graded class discussions.”
“—every single time, unprompted, and her name is such a dead giveaway—”
“So she’s got an alliterative name—what about it?”
“—but you don’t see all the warning signs because she’s, like, in love with you—”
A ridiculous chortle burst out of Jason before he could stop it.
“I’m not kidding,” Prime said, smiling now. “I’m pretty sure half the English department thinks you’re hot.”
Jason felt the corner of his mouth tug up. He couldn’t help it. “Just half?”
“At least half,” Prime conceded. He was grinning that wide, unguarded grin—his default setting, the same way Jason’s was always stuck on ‘kind of an asshole.’ “Women of a certain age dig the tortured poet vibe.”
“Well, they shouldn’t get too comfortable. I don’t think I can stick this out a whole semester.”
“You said that last time.”
“I mean it.”
“You said that last time too.”
Jason didn’t answer right away. He’d gotten the ground lamb out, and it wasn’t long before it was browning in the pan, the smell of it filling the kitchen. It should have been easy to lose himself in the motions—chop the vegetables, add to the pan, wait for the potatoes to boil—but there was something buzzing at the back of his skull, like static he couldn’t tune out.
He’d been trying to work out how to say it for weeks. To find the right words. He wasn’t sure there were any good ones.
“I’m serious,” Jason said finally. Might as well rip the band-aid off now. “I’ve been thinking about it more. This city . . . I’ve been living here for almost a year now. I’ve been out of the mask for too long, and this whole college thing is . . . I don’t think it’s for me.”
He kept his eyes on the pan, giving it a stir before turning the heat down. He could feel Prime watching him, that gaze like a spotlight on his back.
“But you’ve wanted this since—” Prime started to say, his voice hitching. “Since before.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve wanted a lot of things that didn’t pan out.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“It’s a writing degree,” Jason said, forcing his voice flat. He reached for the potatoes next, eager to keep his hands moving. “I’m not exactly setting myself up for job security here.”
“Oh, come on.” Prime let out an exasperated breath. “As if you were ever gonna get a nine-to-five anyway.”
“Exactly. So why bother?”
“Because you’re good at it.”
Prime said it so simply, so earnestly, that it felt like taking a blow straight to the sternum.
Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? Jason was good at it. He’d always known he’d be good at it. College had been something he’d wanted once, desperately enough that it had felt like a lifeline. But the distance between then and now had grown so wide that looking back across it was its own kind of vertigo.
Now he sat in lectures, in polished classrooms with his overpriced textbooks, unable to shake the feeling that none of it fit. That he didn’t fit. As though he’d slipped into someone else’s skin, and any moment now, someone was going to turn around and look at him and know. That they would smell it on him, all the blood he’d spilled. That they would see the dirt under his nails that never scrubbed away.
“Look,” Jason said, as evenly as he could, “if it’s the rent you’re worried about, you don’t have to be, all right? Stay here as long as you want. And It’s not like I’m dropping out tomorrow. I’m just . . . keeping my options open.”
“But this isn’t keeping your options open, it’s—” Prime cut himself off, exhaling sharply. There was an edge in his tone now that Jason hadn’t heard from him in a while. “Whatever. So you’re just gonna, what, go back to Gotham? Is that it?”
The words were a hard shove against an old bruise.
Jason wanted to say yes. He missed Gotham. He missed the skyline. He missed the smell of exhaust and oil, the sounds of morning traffic. He missed the way the city looked from the rooftops in the dead of night, when everything below him was moving and alive, orange lights bleeding up into the clouds.
He had thought, when he’d first arrived in Metropolis, that the distance would feel like freedom. That being somewhere new, somewhere with no particular claim on him, would be a relief. A weight lifted.
He hadn’t realized how much that lightness could feel like emptiness. How much the absence of that weight would leave him untethered. He was a balloon cut free from its string, into a sky too large to navigate.
But Jason knew how this went. He knew what would happen the second he got close enough. He’d go back. He’d cave. And then he’d be back in that same orbit, accepting whatever was on offer, whatever Bruce chose to give him, and he’d tell himself it was enough. That it should be enough, because some part of Jason would always rather have the shadow of what could be, of what he’d once had, than none of it at all.
“Not Gotham,” he told Prime. “New Angelique, probably. See how the city’s doing. The Tower might be gone, but you never know.”
“Crime never sleeps,” Prime said wryly.
Jason shrugged. “And if not there, I was thinking of going abroad. Check in on my old contacts. They might have a job for me. Maybe I could—” He hesitated. “I don’t know, maybe I could string together some visiting student credits while I’m out there. If I’m between cases or something.”
For a long moment, Prime said nothing. Then—
“Laurie would have liked you.”
Jason looked up. Prime was still on the floor, staring unseeingly at the half-built bookcase, a dowel loose in his hand. The look on his face was so familiar that it sent a pang through Jason’s chest.
“Oh yeah?” Jason managed to say.
“She was always talking about getting out. Our town—it’s small. Not Smallville small, but—you know. Everyone knows everyone. And Laurie, she had all these plans—” Prime’s voice caught, ever so slightly. “She used to drive me crazy going on about it. She wanted to go to college out of state. Study abroad, even. She used to say she’d work her way through every library in Europe if she could. Go from one city to the next and never stop.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
Prime huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. He was still looking ahead, gazing at nothing, lost in memories Jason didn’t share. “That’s what I told her. She said I had no vision.”
Jason felt his stomach sink. It wasn’t that Prime had never talked about Laurie before. Prime had talked about her plenty. He talked about Earth-Prime—Laurie and his parents and his childhood, that fateful summer night when he’d gotten his powers, everything that had come after—with an ease that, Jason knew, almost everyone else found disconcerting. Which Jason could understand, even if he didn’t quite share their disdain for the whole murderous-rampage-across-the-multiverse thing that some were still up in arms about, but sometimes when Prime spoke about his home . . .
There were times when Jason would hear the slightest waver in his voice . . . would catch a look of distant longing in his eyes before he could shutter it away . . .
It was the same look Prime was wearing now.
Jason knew that look. Knew how it felt to wear it on his own face.
“Let me guess,” Jason said, trying for nonchalance. “You were going to tag along? Make a whole adventure out of it?”
Prime jolted, drawn back into the present. “What?”
Jason arched a brow. “I take it you weren’t planning to wave goodbye to her at the airport.”
He could picture it. Prime—no, Clark—Clark Kent and Laurie Lemmon. The two of them traveling without a care, safe in their own world, away from the masks and capes of this one. High school sweethearts living out the kind of wholesome romance Jason had only ever seen in books and Hallmark movies, the kind of life they should have always had, happy and peaceful and perfectly, achingly normal.
“We weren’t—I never really—” Prime stammered. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’t know if I would have. Gone with her, I mean.”
“What would you have done, then?”
“I wanted to be an astronaut.” Prime huffed out another little laugh, looking strangely embarrassed. “I used to think about it all the time, what it would be like up there.”
Jason offered him a half-smile. “Doesn’t Met U have an astronomy program? It’s not too late to switch.”
Prime smiled back, shaking his head. “Doesn’t make much sense now.”
“I guess not,” Jason said, turning back to the stove. The shepherd’s pie was nearly done, the lamb, gravy, and vegetables all layered in the dish. As he spread the mashed potatoes over the top, he tried, not for the first time, to imagine what it must be like—for Prime to have his home destroyed, sacrificed for a world that would never understand what he had lost. All the Earths he’d destroyed in turn to find a way back to his own, all the bodies he’d left in his wake . . .
Jason thought of Sheila, how afraid she had been at the end . . . how hard her life must have been for her to have made the choices she had . . .
He had been lucky, all things considered. For all he’d lost, at least he’d had Talia. She had taken care of him as best she could. Maybe it hadn’t been enough in the end, but she had been there for him when he’d had no one else, when she could have so easily left him to fend for himself. He could never repay her for that, for any of it, no matter how badly it had all ended.
But Prime . . .
His world was back. Restored so it had never been destroyed, so no one there would ever have to know what he had done to bring them back.
A happy ending, to hear him tell it. His reward. Like the end of Back to the Future, he’d described it once.
But Prime was here. It had been months since he’d played his part in all those universe-ending cosmic crossover events—or whatever the hell he’d called them—and longer still since Superman had returned. Everything was back to normal. All was as it should be.
And yet Prime was still here.
As uncomfortable as it was to think about a world where he was little more than a fictional character—and apparently a badly written one at that—Jason had heard enough about it, about Prime’s whole schtick, to read between the lines.
Jason slid the shepherd’s pie into the oven and set the timer. He stood there for a moment, considering the best course of action. He could do what they’d always done when it came to shit like this and say nothing. He could let it go and continue dancing around the elephant in the room. Or . . .
“Dinner needs another half hour,” Jason said, hoping to keep his tone light. “Come help with the creme brulee.”
Prime blinked up at him. “Seriously? You’re letting me help?”
“Well, it’s not going to make itself, is it?”
“You are letting me help.” Prime set the dowel down and sprung to his feet. The faraway look hadn’t yet left his eyes, but he flashed a smile so smug that it might have fooled just about anyone else. “So you admit I’m useful.”
Despite his concern, Jason rolled his eyes. “Occasionally. When you’re closely supervised. Get over here.”
Prime did. He followed along with surprising attentiveness as Jason walked him through it: yolks first, then the sugar, then the cream warmed on the stovetop. The kitchen was so narrow that Prime had little choice but to hover at Jason’s elbow, their shoulders brushing whenever either of them moved.
“You okay?” Jason asked eventually.
Prime, who’d been stirring the yolks into the cream, paused. His brow furrowed. “I . . . think so? Did I mess it up? Because if I did—which I didn’t—I want it to be on record that you asked me to—”
“I don’t mean this. I meant . . .”
Jason let his voice trail away, unsure how to finish the question.
But it seemed he didn’t need to. Something brittle flashed across Prime’s face before he tucked it away, smothering it behind a too-bright smile.
“Of course I’m okay,” Prime said, half laughing. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said flatly. “You tell me.”
“It was a long time ago. Really, if you want to get technical about it, it’s been decades since—”
Jason wasn’t sure what expression he was making, but something about it was enough to make Prime stop short. He looked away, his jaw working like he was chewing the words he couldn’t get out.
“It was a long time ago, Jason,” he said again, softly.
“And that’s supposed to make it better?”
To Jason’s surprise, Prime shook his head. “No,” he admitted, his eyes on the backsplash. “Not really.”
Prime leaned against the wall, scratching the back of his head. Jason stayed where he was, half-turned from the counter, and didn’t say anything. He’d learned by now that pushing would get him nowhere with Prime. The only thing that worked was staying put and waiting Prime out, otherwise he’d just talk and talk and talk without saying anything at all.
Finally, Prime sighed. “It just—it catches me off guard sometimes. Missing it. Missing all of it. I used to think—” His voice broke. For the briefest instant, a shadow crossed his face. “It was all I could think about before. Going back. Like—if I could just get back there, everything would make sense again. And now I . . .”
Prime broke off, hesitating, the way he always did—the same way Jason himself did—whenever either of them edged too close to an open wound. Wordlessly, Jason moved to stand beside Prime, close enough that their arms nearly touched, close enough that he could feel the back of Prime’s fingers brushing against his own.
Prime swallowed hard. “It’s—it was home,” he said at last, the words coming out all at once, like a breath he’d been holding too long. “I’ll always miss it, but I think—I think that’s just how it is. Everyone leaves home in the end, don’t they?”
Without meaning to, Jason found himself thinking again of the city across the bay. How it would feel to be back on those rooftops, in that air, with everything that came with it. The unfinished conversations and swallowed apologies and all the things that should have been said years ago and never would be.
What he wouldn’t give to be back there now. What he wouldn’t give to stay far away from it.
“Yeah, I suppose they do,” Jason said quietly.
Prime nudged his shoulder. “I’m okay, though. Really.”
Jason cast him a sidelong glance.
Prime laughed, as though Jason’s blatant skepticism was the funniest thing he’d seen all week. “I am. I’m happy here, Jay. Cross my heart. You think Lois wouldn’t have dragged me to a therapist by now if I wasn’t?”
Jason grimaced. “That’s not the ringing endorsement you think it is.”
“Wait—what’s this?” Prime gasped in mock indignation. “Lois Lane slander? Right in front of me? You’re questioning the Lois Lane—my best friend forever Lois Lane—my best friend five-ever Lois Lane—”
“I’m just saying,” Jason cut in, trying to stifle a smile, “no one who puts on a cape and tights is the poster child for mental health. Just because she doesn’t get involved on this side of the headlines—”
“Sometimes she does,” Prime corrected him. “It’s a whole thing.”
“Even worse.”
Prime smiled—genuine this time. That wide grin of his, as jarring as sunlight cutting through an overcast sky, breaking across his face as he looked toward the living room. At the half-assembled bookcase, flatpack boards and screws still waiting on the rug. At the ridiculous Red Hood plushie that had taken up half of the couch. At the postcards covering the wall around the doorframe—of Lisbon, Reykjavik, somewhere rural in France, a dozen others Jason couldn’t immediately place, a whole geography of places Prime had been and thought worth remembering. At the Polaroids—mostly of Prime, but some candid ones of Jason too, of them both—nestled in the gaps between them.
Then Prime dropped his eyes and said, “I love it here. I know how it sounds but—it’s true. I love this place. I love being here. I—” He stopped abruptly, his ears suddenly flushed red. “I like this. Here.”
It took Jason a moment to realize that Prime was looking down at their hands, his gaze seemingly fixed on the space between them. Jason felt that strange, familiar flutter under his breastbone, and he wondered—with a sudden, inexplicable urgency—if Prime was going to pull away, or if he was going to reach out and—
The timer went off.
Jason turned away.
“You like it here because I feed you,” he said, reaching around Prime to grab the oven mitts.
Prime let out a breath. He turned toward the custard he’d been whisking, an expression settling on his face that Jason couldn’t parse.
“It’s one of the reasons,” Prime said lightly, after a beat. The tips of his ears were still faintly red.
Jason pretended not to notice. Instead, he got the shepherd’s pie out of the oven and set it on the dining table.